Now Kerry wouldn't lie about a trip to see wounded veterans now....would he???

[dude1394]

slings and arrows

[quote]
A Blog Fact-Finding Mission

A Retired U.S. Marine sent me this, and we now have an assignment:

I watched Fox well into the night following last night’s acceptance speech and convention closing. At a certain point Fox played a bit from Kerry’s Springfield Ohio speech. I distinctly heard him refer to his recent visits to hospitals to see and talk to wounded veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. It seemed off the cuff and a direct rebuttal to the best parts of Bush’s speech where the Pres got emotional (and I got emotional with him).

Something about Kerry’s ‘hospitals’ comment struck me as contrived. At first it was, naw, even he wouldn’t politicize that. Then I wondered why I hadn’t heard about this before, neither from his good-news starved staff nor from the biased MSM. Perhaps he does have some class and has chosen not to publicize these visits just as W does it in a very low key and respectful manner. Hunh?! This is John F. Kerry. Exploiting our folks in uniform for political gain is something he learned a long time ago -- and has practiced with impunity ever since.

So then I tried to picture the event. Kinda like Kerry at the VFW or Kerry at the American Legion, or God help us, Kerry at a US messhall in Iraq. It just wouldn’t go down well. Some soldier or Marine would not play the part for him. It struck me, it strikes me, that he made it up. Not even he would be stupid enough to be confronted by a wounded warrior angry at his presence.

I’ve since checked the www.johnkerry.com website and read the text of his speech. No such off the cuff remark. Could it be that he indeed plugged it in on the fly to show he can relate to wounded troops just like the Pres? And could it be that his staff is content to have a sanitized version of the speech on the internet to avoid the scrutiny that I am now giving the remark?

I believe the answer to both questions is ‘yes’. Kerry invented a reference to visiting wounded troops recently, and only a filmed version of his Springfield OH rant will reveal the ‘smoking gun’. Does John Kerry have the temerity, the BACKBONE, to engage a wounded vet of the Global War on terror? Easy one: NO WAY! Would he invent that he has visited them (plural) recently in order to rebut W’s heartrending comments of just an hour or so before? You betcha!

You guys are the pros. I can’t probe Lexis Nexus or whatever… Fox won’t screen the whopper for me to view it again for myself. I honestly think that there is another Kerry tall tale waiting to be exposed. I hope you can run it down.[/l]

Are Kerry's hospital visits the same as his visits from foreign leaders? If you find anything on this email me.

Stay tuned here.

Update: Our marine friend was not hearing things:

Our soldiers are doing an extraordinary job. These are the best and the brightest, the most remarkable people in the military that I've ever seen. I visited a hospital the other day, I met a couple of young soldiers who'd been wounded, I've never seen spirit like that. They're amazing.

Now, can anyone find a media report that details whether such a visit was actually made? So far, I cannot find a single account of Kerry visiting a hospital, let alone talking to wounded vets. A reader emails that I am not alone in coming up goose-eggs:

I took you up on the information search, and I have determined that it's impossible for it to have been within the last month and a half if it ever happened. He was in the US campaigning that entire time, and I have articles from every day for the past month and a half tracking him across the country.

One would think if he visited vets in a hospital it would have made the news. So far, nada.

Update II: I have spent quite some time searching through every reference to Iraq and hospital on JohnKerry.com. There are plenty to go through and I am human so it is possible I have missed something. Barring that, there is not a single reference on Kerry's own website that details a recent visit to injured vets.

On the other hand, there is not a single reference detailing that he did not rob a bank either. In other words, just because it is not specifically mentioned anywhere does not mean it did not happen (the hospital visit, that is -- I am sure Kerry has not robbed any banks).

[dude1394]

Kerry gets off the hook..

slings

We Have a Hit

Fellow blogger Marybeth has found something pretty much gets Kerry off the hook:

Following the rally, Kerry visited former Joint Chiefs of Staff (website - news) chairman John Shalikashvili, who suffered a stroke shortly after the Democratic convention and is in a hospital in Fort Lewis, Wash. The retired Army general, an adviser to the Kerry campaign, had endorsed the candidate at the convention.

This pretty much fulfills the requirements. It is a recent visit to a military hospital and although it doesn't specifically say he visited any soldiers from Iraq or Afghanistan, one can reasonably argue that he talked to at least one while there.

Mission accomplished.